A Supreme Biography: Clarence Thomas

For all you Supreme groupies out there, hot off the presses is “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas.” The publisher’s says that the book grew out of a 2002 WaPo profile. In the article, says the book’s publishers, the authors Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, “both Post staffers, both black, crafted a haunting portrait of an isolated and bitter man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia to elite educational institutions to the pinnacle of judicial power.”

Here’s a transcript of a online chat with the authors held yesterday on the WaPo Web site, a book review by David Garrow in the L.A. Times and a review in the WaPo’s Book World by Yale Law professor Kenji Yoshino. (Hat Tip: How Appealing)

In the Garrow review, we learn that Justice Scalia met with the authors for a series of three lunches at Scalia’s favorite Italian eatery. (Law Blog Trivia: What’s Scalia’s favorite Italian restaurant?) Questioned about the view that Thomas blindly follows him, Scalia replied, “It’s a slur on me as much as it is a slur on him like I’m leading him by the nose. I don’t huddle with Clarence and say, ‘Clarence this is what we’re going to do.’ ” The myth’s persistence, Scalia told the authors, is “either racist or it’s political hatred.”

Law Blog Amazon Watch: “Supreme Discomfort” ranks #1,433. The last time two journalists teamed up to write a book about Justice Thomas was 1994, when Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote about his confirmation process in “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas.” That book ranks #632,988.

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